On the performance of the dynamic packet reservation multiple access scheme in the presence of fading

The dynamic packet reservation multiple access (DPRMA) protocol is designed for integration of multimedia traffic over a wireless link. A primary feature of DPRMA is the centralized controller, a base station in a cellular system, whose responsibility is to allocate resources on the uplink channel. In DPRMA, the base station performs this function in an intelligent fashion based on the resource demands submitted by each active mobile, and the quality of service (QoS) requirements of each user type. Each user is responsible for providing updated information about its immediate bandwidth needs. The ability of a mobile user to dynamically change its bandwidth reservation request and the ability of the system to efficiently match this request with the actual resource allocation are the primary features of the system. The system investigated in this work contains voice, video conferencing, and data traffic. The capacity of the system over a Gilbert-Elliott fading channel is investigated. It is shown that there exists a threshold signal to noise ratio (SNR), above which the degradation of the system performance is relatively small. This threshold is traffic-type dependent. Values of the SNR threshold were identified for the different traffic types considered.